What About the Sabbath Rest?

What about the Sabbath rest takes me back to my fascination with God’s design of us and this world. In this case, I want to talk about the gift of the Sabbath.

The Bible say we should work for 6 days, and then rest on the Sabbath. The 5 day work week first emerged in England at the start of the industrial revolution when people were first working a machine from dawn to dusk in the late 1700’s. People respected and might I say feared God more, so Factory owners may want to work people 7 days a week, but the culture would not accept working on the Sabbath. Think of how different we are now.

So, 18th century British people thought people should go to church on the Christian Sabbath, but workers had to wash clothes and clean up their house on the day off , so they would not go to church. This made many people uneasy, so they pushed for a five day work week, so people could do their personal work on Saturday and all go to church on Sunday.

Now, lets look at what Jesus said about the Sabbath when they said he was breaking the rules:

²⁷ Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

When God made the Sabbath, the whole idea of going to church on the Sabbath did not exist. Jesus said that the Sabbath is a kind of gift to the people of the world – if we can receive it.  If you cannot rest on Sundays, choose another day.

Let’s Receive the Sabbath Rest

God understands our human design better than we do as he made us.   Notably, China had no 7 day week till 1912. Sun Yat-sen, a “Christian” revolutionary who was the key to ending the Qing Dynasty made the change. As the first President of China, he made this policy, and it caught on as it works. China previously had ten day cycles but no rest.

So, work on 6 days, and rest on the 7th.   Let us believe God at his words. This is not a dogmatic command. Interpret it as you will. It is the gift of our loving father. We both need the work and need the rest. Let’s receive it all.